Buffalo Beer Cheese Bites + What is Wet Hop Beer This time of year there is an obsession among the beer crowd, an almost singular obsession that takes over. It’s not pumpkin ales, which seem to be more of an obligation brewers take on mid-summer to compete in an oversaturated fall market. It’ not even… Read More
I had a camera in my face and a man four-inches shorter than me asking questions he should know the answers to. This is mid-day TV, I suppose. This is a cooking segment on a Los Angeles NBC station. This is a person unable to let a millisecond of silence creep across your screen. Your… Read More
Street Fair Grilled Beer Chicken There is a street fair in LA that I used to frequent, with chicken the smells so incredible it will haunt your dreams. I’d rush past the booths of produce, handmade ceramic mugs, the guy trying to get me to vote for his City Council pick, the face painting lady,… Read More
20 minute dinner: Chili Beer Chicken Tacos with Pineapple Salsa Stocking a beer tub for a summer party is as important as planning the food. Beer sets a tone and fuels conversation. It’s as much about offering your friends their favorites as it is about introducing them to new ones. When planning the brew menu keep in… Read More
“If you’re expecting a new craft beer, with a fist of strong hoppy notes, you would be disappointed,” says Erik Lund, the head brewer from Carlsberg, who shifts his tall, lanky frame on a couch across from me. We’re in a back room of a building in Denmark that could be older than the City… Read More
One pot, thirty minutes: Chicken in a Creamy Parmesan Bacon Beer Sauce “It’s because you’re entitled!” I heard the agent at customs yell through the window. She spits her words at an English woman in front of me, waking up the weary crowd in line to enter Stockholm. I was running on the fumes of… Read More
Mushroom Stuffed Hoisin Stout Glazed Chicken Thighs It can be suffocating, really. This urge that has had a hold of me for so many years to please the people. A strangling grip on my throat that kept any words of disappointment from slipping out. Why is this? Why is someone else happiness (especially strangers) prioritized… Read More
Grilled Beer and Brown Sugar Wings Food people mark the seasons in a different way. Sure, plant people mark it by what to plant when, and what to prune, what to seed. Fashion people pin the crap out of new wardrobes. The acting crowd doesn’t have weather seasons, they have “pilot season,” “award season,” “I… Read More
Beer Brined Rotisserie Spiced Chicken Legs I spent a few years resenting chicken. Not chicken in general, beer can chicken. Mostly because when people found out that I cooked with beer for a living, that was the first recipe they thought of. “Like….beer can chicken?” Um, yeah. Or Beer Brined Duck with Stout Pomegranate Sauce… Read More
Coq au Ale: Drunk French Chicken I’m in a back room of a brewery a few minutes after delivering the keynote address at a beer conference and I settle in to listen to a presentation about glassware. I’m bracing for the typical arguments, still vaguely uncertain that a “proper” glass has anything more than… Read More
Slow Cooker Tuscan White Bean and Beer Chicken Soup “You’re not reactionary, you’re rebellious but intentional. You think before you jump off the bridge.” Someone I know well said this to me once. I was the kid your parents warned you about, the one who jumps off the bridge and your parents ask if you’re… Read More
Mushroom Stout Skillet Chicken Pot Pie (with vegan option). One pot, thirty minutes, lick-the-pan-good. What I learned in 2015 If you lower your rates to accommodate someones budget they won’t appreciate you, they will devalue you. You’ll automatically be a bargain item, you’ll be on sale and worth less to them. I learned how to brew… Read More
Beer Brined Lemon Garlic Skillet Chicken. 30 minutes, one pot, so good! They always seem to need to explain themselves to me. When someone, new to beer or not, tells me they don’t like IPA’s it always comes with a disclaimer at the end. As if the mere fact they don’t respond well to one… Read More
Crispy Honey Porter Sticky Chicken Wings This was version 6 of this recipe. Usually, it doesn’t take me that long to get a recipe right. More often than not, I get it on the first try, maybe a few small tweeks, but this one took some trail and a lot of error. None of the… Read More
Slow Cooker Honey Chili Pulled Beer Chicken Sliders This is a sign. It’s fall. I realize that the calendar technically disagrees with me, but the calendar is wrong. Often. Calendars will frequently tell you that the week starts on Sunday, and that Summer starts the end of June. But according to our guts, the week begins on Monday,… Read More
Fill your glass. Fill your stomach. Fill your heart. Roast chicken, accompanied by an opened bottled of hard to find beer, is the way to communicate comfort from the kitchen. It’s a dish that’s been made billions of times, with just as many variations, a dish that can grace the silk covered tables of the… Read More
We are in transition. As much as we want to burry our summer heads in the warm beach sand and ignore the impending fall, we’re only a few weeks away for the hectic pace that September thrust onto our slightly sun seared bodies. Take a breath, take a moment, plan your last few weekends, breath in… Read More
It’s a hectic Wednesday morning and I’m trying to get it all straight in my head. I have emails to answer, deliverables to finishes, calls to make. It makes me want to shut down. I’m not organized, that side of this slightly insane job that I’ve chosen for myself makes me want to crawl under… Read More